Denzell Lee:

The vehicles are constantly evolving

Denzell has connections with the racing teams of Detroit. He'd built Jake’s Hybrid Ram Truck, maintains everyone’s vehicles including Stones’ Cruiser & Pastor Rach’s Hummer

Lately he'd been developing breakthrough electric vehicles using multiple high-power-density organic radical battery packs charged with capacitors charged with super efficient ultra-micro wave-rotor turbines powered with soy oil.

Denzell’s Nissan Frontier: the Wreck

The ragged 2002 crew cab body had originally been silver and owned by a macho skier who liked to carve graceful curves on the slopes of Sandia Peak Ski Area above Albuquerque — while loaded on his own concoction of weed, wine, and meth. When he and his truck had left the Crest Road, after a day on the slopes, he had just been turned down by the chicky he had been chasing all afternoon. He was going far too fast in his drugged anger.

The truck had sailed out into the open air and fallen two hundred feet where it was caught by the hundred-thirty-foot-tall Ponderosa pine forest. The trees had tumbled the truck like a washing machine. When the spin cycle was done the truck was deposited right side up in a dense thicket of scrub oak next to the road two hairpin turns closer to the bottom of the mountain.

Denz had bought it in one of the junkyards on South Broadway in Albuquerque. It had been perfect for his purposes. The roof was still fine, though scraped up. The body was covered with small dents and scratches plus a couple of long dented scrapes. It looked like an old beater the bubbas took to the woods for hunting, drinking, and bad-mouthing their women.

Denzell hadn’t done much to fix the body except to replace the glass. He left a coating of off-road mud along the bottom edges. It was perfect. Underneath the ragged old body was a beefed up racing chassis built by Denzell. Unlike the Tonka Trucks used by the local bubbas, this truck was truly designed for running off-road. As far as Denz was concerned, virtually all the off-roading done in New Mexico was done by bubbas in toy trucks. He was largely correct.

His machine was different. The only things apparent outside were the hardcore nineteen-inch black matte wheels and the rugged tires. The fully independent suspension was of his design — set up to give him a solid fifteen inches of ground clearance. Except for the weight issues from the armor and equipment in the truck, Denzell could have done quite well at Baja or any of the other off-road races.

The engine was a slightly bored out hemi that gave Denzell nearly 600 horses to play with. He kept it slightly detuned — focusing on strength and longevity as opposed to raw power. On the way down the hill from the hacienda Stones had talked Denzell into showing off a little. He had flipped a little switch in the dash to open the tuned headers and floored it. Well actually, he gave the pedal a quick pump that briefly spun the wheels with a shriek and woke up the rest of the neighborhood with the roar of eight tuned headers. Then he just eased it up to about 120 miles per hour in less than a block from his starting speed of just under forty-five miles an hour — carefully not lighting up the tires. At the end of the straight was the ninety-degree curving left that most people took at the legal forty miles an hour. Most SUVs even braked a little. Some kids in beemers took it at seventy-five or eighty miles an hour. Denz took tapped the brakes quickly and then took it through at a steady and accelerating one hundred and five, hitting just under one hundred and forty before breaking hard for the hard right a block south by the ball diamond, cruising through that at about ninety-five, then quickly slowing down to the legal forty and capping the pipes again.

All Major and Stones could do was scream “Yeehaw!” and laugh after it was over. The adrenalin rush was amazing. The speed had been incredible, the G forces extreme. Major had never experienced anything like it except for riding in choppers through narrow canyons. The raw power of this little run was even better though. It was a fun ride.

Inside, where the passenger seat used to be, Denzell had set up a control panel to work with the helmets. On a 17” LCD monitor, he could follow the helmets in real-time through the tracers built into the helmets. In addition, there were six nine-inch LCDs that could show the view from the video cameras that pointed forward over the temples of each helmet. The plan was to eventually synchronize the cameras into true 3D.

In addition there were the controls for the mines he could spit out the back, the machine guns out the front, and the MK-19 fully automatic 40 mm grenade cannon through the back door. The MK-19 could pump out up to 350 rounds a minute, accurate to nearly a mile — the cartridge belts had 500 grenades each. He had developed a feed mechanism that allowed him to choose from armor piercing explosives, thermobaric room cleaners, or the new e-grenades. Denzell was very pleased to be able to test his toys on a real mission.

Armored Yamaha Fazer 600’s:

Denzell had a small fleet of them that Jakob had shipped in from Britain in the back of the garage. They were nearly as fancy as Lupe’s Harley’s — but they were smaller, faster, and much quieter. You couldn’t quite call them stealthy, but they were close. The custom fairings were bulletproof and the seat had a flare to deflect bullets from behind. But the weaponry did not come close to the War Hogs — just a couple of light machine guns out the front.

Danny Aragón’s Escalante:

Denzell Lee had worked with Jorge Maldonado, his driver and long-time friend, to build his ride for Washington. No one knew the armament he carried for protection outside of Jakob’s team, Jorge, and the Secret service. The Secret Service was impressed, by the way.

Danny’s “Stealth” Dodge Grand Caravan:

The paint showed bad sun damage, the gel coat gone in large areas, with that ragged white haze surrounding the area of matte color beat in by the sun. The right front fender was caved in gently. There were long scratches along the left side. The bumper was hanging down on the right side, the end bent back where a tree tried to rip it off. However, if you observed carefully you would notice the lack of salt damage.

Inside — the van was almost as luxurious as his Escalade. But more importantly, this van had many more defensive weapons. It could strew anti-vehicle mines out the back. There was a .50 caliber machine gun and a port that allowed a 90° field of fire through what used to be the back door. The back portion of the roof could be dumped to allow Stingers to take out plane or helicopter attacks. There was a man stationed behind the senator, where the third seat used to be, behind a soundproof/bulletproof wall. There were two light machine guns below the front headlights. They could not be aimed, but they laid down a hail of bullets in the direct path the van wanted to go.

To say the armor plating was good would be a massive understatement. There was active armor covering the passenger compartment, with best in armored glass and bullet absorbing ballistic nylon/carbon fiber plate around the rest of the vehicle. The air conditioning and air filtration would stop any known poison gas or biological weapon.

It had a custom tube steel frame supporting the unitized body with massive run flat tires driven by a custom-built six-speed manual transmission. It had a bored out hemi that delivered nearly 500 horsepower in an engine that was so unstressed that it was probably good for 100,000 miles. The engine was swapped every 30,000 or so to be sure. All in all it was a safe ride. Jakob took care of his friends. Jorge loved driving this “old” van. It handled better than any car he had ever driven. In fact, the only real problem was the excessive power that would light up the tires with a momentary lapse of attention to pedal pressure. He was sure that Denzell could enter this thing in a stock car race and do really well (if the weight of the armor was pulled).